amazon music

Amazon and Google's relationship over the past few years has been nothing short of an epic love-war popcorn-worthy chess battle. Amazon removes Chromecasts from its store, Google disables YouTube on Echo Shows, Amazon removes the Prime Video app from the Play Store then for some reason returns it. Now in one surprisingly nice move, Amazon has added Chromecast support to its Music app, maybe finally realizing that locking users out of certain functions or devices doesn't do it any good.

The Chromecast integration has been showing up for a couple of weeks inside the Amazon Music app: TechHivereported it at the start of the month, but at the time it was only showing for some devices.

You can already ask Alexa to play you the latest Ed Sheeran hit on various music platforms, either through the Alexa app on your phone or via an Amazon Echo device. Starting today, you'll also be able to call on Alexa to control your music playback from directly within the Amazon Music app.

Amazon Music is one of many audio streaming services. If you're neck-deep in Amazon's ecosystem, then I suppose it's one of the best choices for you — especially since Prime members get a discount on the monthly fee. The Android app just received an update that switches from the hamburger menu to a bottom nav bar. The new version also comes with the ability to share tunes to other subscribers.

Hot on the heels of a recent update to the Galaxy S7 and S7 edge, Verizon has released one for the Galaxy Note5 and S6 edge+. Like the S7/S7 edge update, this adds support for a barcode scanning app called Barcode Beaming Service. Unfortunately, Note5 and S6 edge+ owners will not receive the FM radio capability that S7 and S7 edge owners just did. Fixes for Verizon's Advanced Calling are included as well.

Music subscriptions are all the rage now - most people I know use either Spotify or the services offered by Google and Apple. Not mentioned as much is, erm, Amazon, and its oft-forgotten Music service that acts as a locker for music purchased on and through Amazon. According to Recode, the company plans to reinvent it by introducing two music streaming services with different aims.

The first is similar to what you'd expect: $10 a month for all-you-can-stream music, akin to Spotify or other offerings. The other option Amazon is considering is more unusual. This would only work through Amazon's Echo hardware, so not on phones, tablets, or the web, and cost $4 or $5 a month.

Amazon is apparently hoping the third time's a charm when it comes to music services, at least if a new rumor from Reuters is to be believed (which, yeah, it probably should be). According to Reuters, Amazon will launch a $9.99 per month music subscription service to compete with the likes of Spotify, Apple Music, Play Music, and others.

If you remember, Amazon MP3 was actually Android's stock internet music player back in the day, until Amazon and Google had a falling out over Fire OS that to this day has lingered with consequences for consumers, like Android TV not having Amazon Instant Video.

It's been just over a month since the Verizon versions of the Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge received their Android 6.0 updates, which were welcome if somewhat belated. Today the phones get another bump, but there's no version number jump this time. Nope, it's just a few bug fixes and app tweaks. Try to contain your excitement.

In my tiny little corner of the world, we get very few perks with any of our mobile plans. No unlimited calls, no unlimited texts, and lots of limited data. That hasn't stopped an enterprising local music service from convincing carriers to offer an unlimited streaming plan only on their app for a small fee. That goes to show that people may not care about calls or texts anymore, but there's always room for offers when it comes to entertainment.

T-Mobile has been trying to pioneer that area in the US and (politics and legalese and execution aside) has managed to get really good deals for customers who might be interested in them. I am such a music and TV show addict that I wish I lived in the US and could benefit from "free" data usage on some streaming services, even if it meant a loss in the quality of the stream.

Amazon has been slowly but steadily improving its official Music app for years. The latest update, which is christened version 5.0, adds quite a few features. Most notable among them is the ability to download music from your personal library and/or Amazon Prime Music directly to your phone or tablet's MicroSD card, assuming you have one. That should be especially useful for users with budget phones, which tend to rely on expandable storage and ignore the fact that many apps don't access it in the first place.

Sonos has become the de facto standard for multi-room audio systems, despite the fact that there are now several cheaper (if not better) alternatives. Today it becomes a little better still: those who use Amazon's Prime Music (which is included as a freebie if you've subscribed to Amazon Prime for the free shipping or other benefits) can now stream music directly from the Sonos system. The feature is currently in beta, according to the official Sonos company blog.

Oddly, this isn't the first time that Amazon Music and Sonos have crossed paths, just the first time it's been available specifically for the Prime section of the service.